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LGSO - Organize Your Game Saves

By Tux1c - | Views: 14,717
With the new arrival of Steam games to Linux came the messy Windows-ish file-structures of the games. They get scattered all around your hard drive without you having a clue what is actually going on which we already talked about before.

I have decided to try and help with that matter, and wrote a simple bash script that would take all of your save data, move it to your home//.local/share/games, and create symlinks instead of the actual save data, so the games would be able to access the new save location. I call that script LGSO (Linux Game Saves Organizer).

The script is far from perfect and I have a lot to add, but the basics of the script are already there, and it is fully usable.

As the documentations of Linux games are very poor, I've struggled with finding game save paths, and therefore LGSO currently only supports 4 games: 3089, 7 Days to Die, Blade of Destiny and Planet Explorer. It needs help to support many more.

The main goals of my script are to tweak it a little bit more (add a backup\restore function, easy customization) and to maintain a wiki with all of the save paths, for others to be able to refer to.

LGSO is available at GitHub: https://github.com/Tux1c/LGSO

And you can currently contribute by either reporting bugs and issues, giving locations of game saves, or submitting Pull Requests with pieces of code you think should be implemented! Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Toolkit
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WorMzy Oct 16, 2014
Can I suggest tagging your releases?
lucifertdark Oct 16, 2014
Braid is one that can be added easily, it's hiding in /.Braid , I don't have a github account.

ps the rest of the games I've got installed in steam right now all have their save files in the /.local/share folder, all over the share folder.
xitij2000 Oct 16, 2014
I wrote a small python script for myself a while back that places links for all my game saves in one folder. Another small bash script tars each of those and puts in a folder for backup.

I also wrote a scraper for scrapy that downloads information about save game locations from PC Gaming Wiki.

Here is save game location data for hundreds of games:
https://gist.github.com/xitij2000/c5e66d5447dc7653a3ea

It lists over 400 entries, but many are blank.
Xpander Oct 16, 2014
http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Category:Linux

is a good place to look for save locations
Linas Oct 16, 2014
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This is a great idea. Although quite maintenance-intensive, and not unique to games. Not all "normal" Linux applications respect the standard either.

Although the most annoying ones for me are those that just drop stuff into my home directory without even hiding it. Can probably be "solved" with some pre- post- scripts. Something like:

ln -s ~/.local/share/games/evilgame ~/evilgame; runevilgame.sh; rm ~/evilgame
pd12 Oct 16, 2014
Where is your online database? You should include it in your git:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Tux1c/Tux1c.github.io/master/projfiles/lgso/lgsolist.txt

You should potentially make it editable like a wiki, so people with no programming skills can just enter in a new game (pushes approved by mods of course, no funny code injection like "rm -rf /" =P)
OZSeaford Oct 16, 2014
Amazing initiative! I will try this out tonight.I am sure that we can fill the save game entries as a community.
aL Oct 16, 2014
steam should probably take the lead on this one and "recommend" to the developers to follow XDG standard

http://standards.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html
DrMcCoy Oct 16, 2014
Quoting: Tux1c 2it is fully usable

Yeah, and there's really no error checking at all that the directory creation, copying, etc. was successful before it rm -rf $OLD_DIR.

I also don't like that it gets a random file from the internet, parses it and uses the entries in that file to just go about your home and copy and delete stuff there. No even asking for confirmation anywhere. It would quite easily be able to delete your whole home directory with a tiny mistake in that lgsolist.txt file...
Tux1c Oct 16, 2014
Quoting: WorMzyCan I suggest tagging your releases?
Yes thank you I will.

Quoting: lucifertdarkBraid is one that can be added easily, it's hiding in /.Braid , I don't have a github account.

ps the rest of the games I've got installed in steam right now all have their save files in the /.local/share folder, all over the share folder.
OK, will look into that.

Quoting: xitij2000I wrote a small python script for myself a while back that places links for all my game saves in one folder. Another small bash script tars each of those and puts in a folder for backup.

I also wrote a scraper for scrapy that downloads information about save game locations from PC Gaming Wiki.

Here is save game location data for hundreds of games:
https://gist.github.com/xitij2000/c5e66d5447dc7653a3ea

It lists over 400 entries, but many are blank.
Thank you, will look into that.

Quoting: Xpanderhttp://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Category:Linux

is a good place to look for save locations
Thanks!
Quoting: pd12Where is your online database? You should include it in your git:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Tux1c/Tux1c.github.io/master/projfiles/lgso/lgsolist.txt

You should potentially make it editable like a wiki, so people with no programming skills can just enter in a new game (pushes approved by mods of course, no funny code injection like "rm -rf /" =P)
Originally, the idea is to open an issue with the tag "game save" with all of the info, but I'll look into that.

Quoting: DrMcCoy
Quoting: Tux1c 2it is fully usable
Yeah, and there's really no error checking at all that the directory creation, copying, etc. was successful before it rm -rf $OLD_DIR.

I also don't like that it gets a random file from the internet, parses it and uses the entries in that file to just go about your home and copy and delete stuff there. No even asking for confirmation anywhere. It would quite easily be able to delete your whole home directory with a tiny mistake in that lgsolist.txt file...
Will work on it, thanks.
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